“I can’t go on anymore.” With those words on Monday 3 November 2025, Carlos Mazón gave up the presidency of Spain’s Valencia region, a year and five days after floods killed 229 people there.
The figure is only part of the toll. Another eight people died in neighbouring regions, and the BBC described the disaster as Spain’s worst natural catastrophe in decades. It struck on 29 October 2024.
The lunch and the late alert
What turned a tragedy into a political case was what the regional leader did that day. According to the BBC, Mazón sat at a restaurant table for almost four hours with the journalist Maribel Vilaplana while water tore through towns, and he missed much of the emergency coordination. The Guardian put the lunch at more than three hours. Mazón had said he followed events by phone from the table.
Then came the phones of ordinary Valencians. No emergency alert reached them only after 20:00, when dozens had already died, the BBC reported.
A year of pressure
Mazón, a People’s Party politician on the conservative side, held on through months of demonstrations. Protesters chanted “Mud on our hands, blood on his”. The most recent march, on 25 October, drew an estimated 50,000 people into the streets of Valencia, the BBC said. A survey cited by the Guardian found that 75% of Valencians wanted him gone.
He had also argued his case in public. No government in the world, he said earlier, has the tools to stop a torrential downpour that breaks historical rainfall records in one place at one time.
The breaking point came at the state memorial service held on the anniversary, the Wednesday before his announcement. Mazón insisted on attending. Relatives of the dead shouted “murderer”, “coward” and “you should be in prison” at him, the Guardian reported. The BBC noted that he looked shaken afterwards.
What he said
Announcing his decision, Mazón said: “I know that I made mistakes, I acknowledge it and I will live with them for the rest of my life.” He added that he should have cancelled his schedule that day and taken charge of the crisis. He also insisted that none of his errors came from political calculation or bad faith. In the same speech he sharply criticised how the national government handled the emergency, according to the Guardian.
The timing mattered. On the day he quit, Vilaplana testified before the judge investigating possible negligence. Spanish media, as relayed by the BBC, reported that she told the magistrate Mazón “was constantly texting on his phone” and took “a lot of calls”.
Several questions were left open. Mazón did not say whether he was calling a snap election, whether he would also leave his seat in the regional assembly, which would end his parliamentary immunity, or who would take over in the interim. A congressional inquiry into the events of 29 October 2024 is under way.
Sources
- Valencia leader resigns over handling of deadly floods
- Valencia president Carlos Mazon resigns over deadly floods
